


All I Did Was Blink Twice

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: heaven for the climate, but hell for the company [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-23
Updated: 2012-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:37:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3220919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are what they are and they like it that way. Ditzy slots back into home life after time spent away, and there’s nearly nothing to show he was ever gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Did Was Blink Twice

**Author's Note:**

> Title's from the same Tinchy Stryder song as the previous fic.

            The house was empty. Ditzy dropped his Bergen in the hallway, kicked off his boots and wandered into the kitchen, calling for Claire, who did not appear. Of course – Friday, three o’clock. School didn’t finish until four and Claire often didn’t leave until six, since she did extra lessons with some of Year Thirteen and the foreign-language club.

 

            He went and took a shower, changing into completely clean clothes and bunging everything else into the wash. It felt strange, walking around his own home without Claire in it, like he was in a foreign country or a stranger’s house. He noticed more. The bed was made, but (unusually for Claire) half an outfit was over the back of Claire’s dressing-table chair, and the only kind of shower gel in the shower was the brand he preferred. The radio was set to Magic FM, not BBC Radio 1. Books lay abandoned on counters, tables, sofa-arms; he knew Claire read for comfort, and she must have been seriously anxious to have resorted to the complete works of Andy McNab, Simone de Beauvoir, a tottering pile of Nicci French thrillers, what looked like half of Dickens confused with half of Austen, three Georgette Heyers and an omnibus of Shakespeare’s tragedies without putting any of them back on the shelf. The silence echoed.

 

            “Sod it,” he said out loud, slipped a jacket and a pair of trainers on and tucked his keys and phone into his pocket. It was only a half-hour bus-ride to Claire’s school anyway.

 

            Ditzy walked briskly down the road towards the bus-stop, and keyed in Claire’s number – a wasted effort, since it was on speed-dial, but he wanted to be sure that he remembered it. He got her voicemail. “Hi, babe. I’m back. Coming to find you at school – call me when you get this.”

 

            He had to wait ten minutes for the bus – ten minutes in which he did not get a reply to his voicemail, ten minutes which had him tapping his foot impatiently against the grey pavement and contemplating walking to the school instead – but eventually it arrived and he hopped on and bought a ticket, taking a seat near the back. The streets wound past much too slowly for his liking, even though he knew Claire wouldn’t be out of school till four at the very earliest and it was still only twenty past three. Finally, to work off his impatience after the bus’s creaking, crawling, roundabout journey, he got off the bus a stop too early and walked the rest of the way at a brisk march, ignoring all traffic and pedestrians, just heading for Claire.

 

            By the time he got to the school it was ten to four, and although none of the kids were coming out there was a boiling air of expectancy about the building, a storm working itself up in the clouds. He pushed the door to the reception open and stood awkwardly in front of the receptionist, a quizzical bottle brunette in her fifties who peered up at him over jazzy patterned glasses. “David Owen,” he said, and his real name sounded strange in his mouth; he felt like he should have said _Ditzy_ , but that wasn’t right for this part of his life. “I came to meet my girlfriend, Claire Bradley? She teaches French here.”

 

            “Oh, yes. Miss Bradley. _I_ know.” The receptionist glanced at the clock. “You’re a bit early, Mr Owen, would you mind just waiting there?... I’ll send a call up to the staffroom.” She waved a hand at the row of chairs nearby, within sight of the receptionist’s desk and broken up by a low table covered in magazines, a little like in a doctor’s surgery but with more school prospectuses. He sat down and flicked through one of these without actually reading it, out of the way of the stream of children and teenagers who had now begun to flee the building: after a moment, the receptionist tried to call the staffroom again, frowned, and summoned one gangling teenaged boy out of the horde trying to leave.

 

            “George, you’re in Miss Bradley’s class, aren’t you?”

 

            Ditzy did not glance up, but he stopped turning over the pages, and listened hard to what the boy said.

 

            “Yeah.”

 

            “Have you just had a lesson with her? Do you know if she’s gone back to the staffroom?”

 

            “Um, no – she was telling off Lucy Jackson and Harpreet Singh.” The boy shifted from foot to foot. “She’s probably done by now?” he said, hopefully implying that he was done too, and ought to be gone.

 

            “Thank you, George,” the receptionist said, and the teenager vanished gratefully. “They’ll tell her in the staffroom I called,” the receptionist continued, now addressing Ditzy. “Is it a special occasion? What with you coming to meet her?”

 

            “I’ve been away,” Ditzy said, in a tone that did not invite questions. The receptionist raised her eyebrows, nodded knowingly, and went back to working on her computer.

 

            Ditzy waited until he heard the sound of hasty, sharp-tapping heels, and then his head jerked to the side and he saw Claire hurrying towards him, glass-green eyes alight. He found himself on his feet and moving towards her without even knowing how he had got there, and then she had collided with him and was clinging to him, her curly fair hair tickling his nose and the sensitive skin of his eyelids as he pressed his face into it and breathed deeply.

 

            “Oh _David_ ,” Claire said, no-nonsense voice warm and familiar and brimming with affection, “why on earth did you come to meet me at school?”  


            “I thought it would be nice?” Ditzy suggested, surprised.

 

            “It’s very nice,” Claire assured him, a spark in her eyes and in the promising curve of her wide mouth. “It’s just that I can’t kiss you senseless in my place of work. I refuse. I have principles, you know.”

 

            He grinned, pressed his forehead against hers and laced his fingers into hers. “Oh really? That can be fixed.”

 

            “I’m sure,” Claire said dryly, and rested her head on his chest, leaning against him. He drew her closer and put his arms around her waist, putting his chin on the top of her head with some difficulty, considering that she was wearing block-heeled boots that made her three inches taller than usual. He let his mind wander and his eyes go blank for a few minutes, just relaxing, then poked her in the kidney.

 

            “Ow,” Claire said, muffled against his t-shirt. “What?”

 

            “Can we go home?” he murmured in her ear, stroking the small of her back through the fine knit of her raspberry pink top. “Please?”

 

            “Oh God. Of _course_ ,” Claire said in a tone of voice which betrayed the number of books scattered across their home which would doubtless magically reappear on their proper shelves in the next couple of days without Claire ever explaining their disorder. She pulled away from Ditzy, and he found himself doubting the merits of any plan that meant she wasn’t in his arms right now. “Come on,” she ordered him, one hand wrapping around his, and he realised that she already had her capacious work bag filled with everything she planned to do, and he planned to distract her from, over the weekend.

 

            She all but dragged him out to the car, parked in a staff parking space outside, and slid into the driving seat, moving as if she were in a huge hurry, barely looking at him. Ditzy wondered if she actually planned on stopping to breathe between here and home.

 

            “Hey,” he said softly, and took possession of her hand, which had already seized the gearstick. “What’s up?”

 

            Claire stopped, and it looked as if she had shrunk in on herself.

 

            “Sweetheart,” Ditzy said, alarmed, and slid a hand through her short, thick blonde curls. She leaned her head into his touch, eyes closed, and he saw she looked tired and strained.

 

            “I’m sorry, Dave,” she muttered at last. “I just want you home.”

 

            “I’m here,” Ditzy pointed out cautiously, not entirely sure what she was talking about.

 

            Claire shook her head violently. “No. I want you _home_. I want to order a takeaway with you and squabble over fish and chips or Chinese. I want to watch a stupid movie with you and tear it to shreds. I want to skive off my marking just for a night. I want to get you to put up the extra bookshelves I got last weekend, even though I could do it myself, and watch you sitting there reading every last sentence of the instructions like the bloody-minded idiot you are. I want to go to sleep and know you’ll be there when I wake up in the morning. I want to trip over your boots in the hallway and yell at you for leaving them all over the floor, I want, I want...”

 

            “I think I can manage that,” Ditzy assured her, a bit bemused but perfectly willing to go along with whatever she was thinking.

 

            “Well _good_ ,” Claire snapped, segueing into a short-tempered tone she didn’t mean as she often did when feelings got the better of her, “because I _missed_ you, Dave Owen. You bloody idiot.”

 

            Ditzy took the last three words to mean ‘I love you’, and leaned over to kiss her on the temple. “I love you too. And I missed you as well. God, so much.”  

 

              Claire leaned silently against him for a moment, and then straightened. “You realise I’m going to hear all about this on Monday morning?” she said, staring narrow-eyed at a couple of her pupils cycling past, grinning and waving at Miss Bradley and her boyfriend.

 

            “Yup,” Ditzy said cheerfully, settling back into his seat. “Shall we get fish and chips and a lousy film from the DVD store on the way back, or did you have something in mind?”

 

            Claire laughed, and carefully avoided running over her students as she nosed out of the school car park. “I didn’t, actually. Let’s go with that.”

 

            The queue at the fish and chip shop was horrendous; Claire, still in full bossy-boots mode, sent Ditzy next door to choose a DVD while she waited. Ditzy recognised this as a compliment of the highest order, given that Claire couldn’t stand the zombie movies he liked best, and picked out _Troy_ instead, on the grounds that there were plenty of action scenes, it was appalling enough to laugh at, and that Claire would announce that shirtless Brad Pitt made up for being expected to watch a semi-mythical swashbuckler of a movie, and he could then sulk theatrically while Claire laughed until she turned purple. He came back to find Claire slightly closer to the till and giving a man in his early twenties with a local accent and no sense of when to back off a truly evil stare and a piece of her mind.

 

            “See?” she said grimly, eyes lighting up when she saw Ditzy at the door to the fish and chip shop. “One boyfriend, property of me. I told you he’d be along. Now piss off.”

 

             Ditzy thought to himself that if he were Blade, a notoriously jealous boyfriend, he would probably now lose his temper and skewer Claire’s unwanted suitor. It was probably best for all concerned that he was Ditzy, and not inclined to do anything of the sort. He put one large and proprietary hand on Claire’s back, and sized up the man, who was already beginning to look a little warier.

 

            “Problem, Claire?”

 

            Claire melted back into his touch, expression not a little smug. “He was just leaving, Dave. _Weren’t you_ ,” she added for the benefit of the miscreant in tones that could have silenced a year-end assembly.

 

            The miscreant decided that discretion was the better part of valour and went away, Claire gave Ditzy a long and lingering kiss just to hammer the point home, and they reached the front of the queue. Ditzy spared a moment to be pleased with life, and then rattled off their usual order. Claire, who actually had cash on her because she hadn’t wandered out of the house with a jacket and a spot of spare change, paid for it, and they shifted along to the eat-in area to wait, where Claire colonised a lonely tall stool at the counter overlooking the street and Ditzy stood between her knees and rested one hand on the counter behind her and the other on one of her knees.

           

            “I should face facts, shouldn’t I?” Ditzy said conversationally, looking into Claire’s eyes, which had gone distant and wandering although her wide mouth was fixed in a small smile and her hands were loosely curled into his t-shirt. (He really couldn’t get enough of looking at her.) Her attention snapped back to him, and she raised one strong eyebrow.

 

            “What facts?”

 

            Ditzy grinned, and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. She was wearing a giant flower clip, in the guise of the largest and pinkest fake rose he’d ever seen, to keep most of it out of her way, but some curls had escaped. “I’m just a way to get rid of idiots and a convenient means of ordering takeaway to you, aren’t I?”

 

            Claire grinned back at him, eyes sparkling, and one of her hands fell to grasp his on her knee. “Duh. Obviously. Why did you think I moved in with you? So much handier than having you on the other side of the country.”

 

            Ditzy snickered, and toyed with her hand. Her nail polish was immaculate, soft pastel pink patterned with grey diamonds. Ditzy suspected Liz Lester. “Seen much of the others while I was gone?”

 

            “Cara and Lizzie lots,” Claire said. “Lorraine once or twice. Went up to London and stayed overnight at hers. Liz Lester came round with brownies and her dad in tow. James is funny, when he wants to be, and when he’s not shattered.” She raised a hand and wiggled the fingers illustratively. “That’s why the nail polish. I want to know what she uses, this is from last Sunday and it’s _still_ not chipped.”

 

            Ditzy duly admired it. “Met a girl called Helena? Vet, mid-twenties, red hair, freckles, short temper. Ross won’t shut up about her.”

 

            Claire chuckled. “Ross won’t shut up about most things. Yes, Lorraine sprung us on her, which I don’t think Miss Helena liked very much.”

 

            Ditzy snorted, and went to grab their order, which had just been called by the harassed boy behind the till. The plastic bag was warm in his hands, fresh fish and chips burning through their layers of paper wrapping. Claire slipped off the stool and led the way out to the car, unlocking it and slipping back into the driver’s seat.

 

            They were in the middle of what passed for rush hour in Hereford, although Claire was apt to scoff at it and tell horror stories of her commute in London, and it took slightly longer than usual to reach Makepeace Street, but the fish and chips weren’t going to get cold in the time and Ditzy was more than happy to just sit and watch Claire. He’d always thought she was stunning and still remembered his description of her when he’d first seen her, across a bar on a Saturday night drinking with her friends – _the gorgeous blonde with the curls_ , he’d told the barmaid when he sent her a drink. She was still the gorgeous blonde with the curls, even though they were eight inches shorter. Ditzy had a hazy idea that she’d always be the gorgeous blonde with the curls to him.

 

            “You’re thinking,” Claire said, parking neatly. “Dangerous of you.”

 

            He snorted. “Not half. Do you remember how we met?”

 

            She gave him a sideways smile. “ _Do_ I? How long did it take me to get you into bed, exactly - an hour, was it?”

 

            “If that,” Ditzy grinned, and kissed her, because she was there and because she was smiling and because, he’d realised a good three years ago, he loved her more than anything else. Including Kidderminster Harriers, although Claire would burst out laughing and accuse him of betrayal and adultery to poor, abandoned Kiddy if he said so.

 

            Also, as he’d known for four years, kissing her was a _lot_ of fun.   

 

            “Fish and chips,” Claire said, with a sudden, disconcerting return to practicality, and peeled herself away from him, heading towards the house with a purposeful air. Ditzy picked up her handbag, which she seemed to have forgotten, and presented it to her with a mocking comment when he found her patting down her pockets, unable to understand why her keys weren’t leaping to her fingers. She flicked his ear with a fingernail and kissed it better when he made an injured noise, then let herself in, disabled the alarm and vanished into the kitchen to pick up plates and glasses.

 

            Ditzy grinned and took himself into the living room to set the DVD player going, asking himself (as he occasionally did) how it was that two complete jokers like Claire and himself had made it to the point where they could all but read each others’ minds. He answered himself (as usual) with the fact that if a pair of icebergs like Blade and Lorraine could do it, then anyone could, and that he shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth anyway.

 

“Can I have a beer?” he yelled, sitting on the floor and prodding the DVD player, which was so elderly it looked as if it had been housed alongside the Ark of the Covenant for the last thousand years and behaved like a cross baboon when asked to perform a simple task.

 

“Ask nicely!” Claire yelled back.

 

“Please!” he shouted, inserting the obligatory whiny note.

 

Claire reappeared, carrying two plates, two sets of cutlery and a gin and tonic, but not, he noticed, a beer. “What will you do for me if I get you one?” she said, a cheeky, challenging grin on her face, and put the things in her arms down on the floor before collapsing inelegantly into his lap.

 

Ditzy made the obligatory elephant-hitting-a-bouncy-castle noise, and achieved success with the DVD player. “Anything,” he promised Claire, removing the clip from her hair and discarding it so he could wind a hand into her curls and gently tip her head back, giving him free rein to mouth his way down the column of her neck to the dip in her collarbone.

 

“Anything, huh?” Claire said, a distinctly distracted note in her voice. “Don’t let your mouth write cheques you can’t cash, sweetie...”

 

He grinned, let go of her hair, and leaned back on his elbows so that, when she sat up straight, she was looking down at him. “Don’t you trust me?”

 

“Oh, not as far as I could throw you,” Claire assured him, her eyes and her smile and her fingers light on the angle of his jaw saying something entirely different.

 

“Baby, you can –”

 

Claire clapped a hand over his mouth. “Oh God _no_ ,” she groaned, but she was laughing, “the one thing I didn’t miss – the sodding awful puns.” She took her hand away. “I’ll get you that beer if you’ll only shut up. Strong and silent, that’s the thing. Like one of those gorgeous Greek statues, only cuddlier.”

 

He grinned and joked that he’d got off lightly if that was all she wanted, but told himself when she went out to the kitchen that he meant to keep his promise anyway, even if she hadn’t actually meant the condition she’d set. He loved this, he loved taking the piss out of Claire and being ruthlessly mocked in return, and he loved knowing that when he fell silent she would too, and that he’d never be short a hug or a kiss or a touch if he wanted one – and Ditzy was infamously tactile, cold hands notwithstanding. He loved being home, with peace and quiet and their own particular demented brand of normality, where they could close off the world and pretend that they had nothing bigger to worry about than cooling fish and chips, the whereabouts of the vinegar and the relative merits of Brad Pitt’s abs and Angelina Jolie’s tits.

 

His forfeit was nothing of the kind, he thought when Claire brought him a can of beer (which was cold, therefore had been kept in the fridge, so Claire had been planning this – Ditzy thanked anyone listening for an organised and thoughtful girlfriend and set aside the warmer and squishier feelings for later). He would have given Claire anything she wanted anyway, because he loved that, too. All he’d done was give her an excuse to ask.

 

Ditzy set the film going and complained about Claire stealing his chips. It was good to be home.


End file.
